Ex-Fannie Mae engineer pleads not guilty

The ex-Fannie Mae employee who was accused of attempting to sabotage thousands of servers at Fannie Mae has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. Rajendrasinh B. Makwana entered the plea during an arraignment hearing before a federal magistrate judge in Maryland.

In an interesting twist, the FBI appears to have misidentified Makwana's employment history. Omnitech, the company that Makwana represented when performing his role at Fannie Mae claimed that it merely acted as a "pass-through" vendor and the actual employer was IT contractor IonIdea. Narendra KV, who is a vice president at IonIdea did admit that the company did bill Fannie Mae for Makwana's work.

I think a pertinent question not covered by most of the news report would be the possibility of whether the malicious code could be planted in an attempt to frame Makwana. Whichever way it goes, this case certainly has larger repercussions for everyone in the IT industry.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Computerworld

Related Article:
Ex-Fannie Mae employee accused of attempting to sabotage computer